Just a Choking Feeling, all day.

Well another anniversary has been and gone.

A short visit out to the plot with the kids and flowers from the garden.

Hard to talk to them out there. Tidy up the headstone and place the bouquet. Tarn liked getting and giving flowers.

The twins pillage the garden for flowers sometimes for a small table display, the stalks a bit too short for the size of the display, but I imagine it would have been just the same with their mum looking on too instead of me alone, admiring their energy and "artistic flair".

Girls broke into tears for the first time out there, ever, on leaving. They are growing up so much, and I really felt for them. I nearly got a group hug going, the boys hung back, quiet.

My sister in law writes of the minutes gone by since that day ten years ago, what was going on at the time. Some of my memories that are stand out, not too blurred, are these, my in laws and a party trip.

Her father was not that pleased at some of the Olympic antics about then, seems so far away. Well, he is pretty old and set in his ways, and it was hard not to laugh at his comments on the goings on up at Sydney back then. He was not trying to be funny, he was-  annoyed, but it was the Games, an entertainment event of the centuries! Like me though, he could not believe the costly fuss they had up there. Bev loved the idea of us getting outta town, she could handle this lot!

In the middle of that September, I had taken Tarn to a very old friend's of mine's surprise 40th birthday party, not far from the big smoke, my old home town.

So we left two hundred kilometers behind us the kids with Ken and Bev for their first time as "bulk" baby sitters, before they moved away to the big smoke for Bev.

This was to be our first and last night away alone together since the girls were born.

Tarn was all dressed up again, looking just fine. Tarn met Paul and Sue and many other of my old mates and their wives and husbands. We had a good time. There was a mutual friend Trish from college that had married another old friend of mine. Even an old unrequited love of mine! And her ex!!! Could not talk to him that night! Paul and Sue were the same people they were years ago I thought. Same with the rest- but we didn't get to talk about twenty years of activities all in one night! Kids photos were passed around, there were a few.

The next day I drove us home a different route this time, along the hills instead of the freeway to surprise her. The next time I traveled that way a few years later was hard, and I do not think I will be doing it again.

It would hard to believe that just less than two weeks later, a lot of those old friends were with me again in a totally different situation.

Ups and downs, choked and alive. That's life I spose. It was not the best day of my life.